Craig Nelson intends to make full use of technology to help Tonbridge next season - but he won’t be ruled by it.

New Angels boss Nelson is a long-time advocate of technology and sports science and the benefits they offer.

He had measures in place at Lewes, such as in-game clips, and is looking to implement those as he gets to work at Longmead.

“At Lewes, we had an interactive screen in the changing room, so we could clip elements of the game to show the players real-life problem-solving from what the game is telling us,” said Nelson.

“Through that, we can annotate on it and build training sessions.

“When I’m coaching on the grass, I like to drone our training session as well, so you get an aerial view, we clip that up and we use that as part of their feedback either for pre-training or pre-game.

“There’s some software applications we’ll bring in as well that can do all sorts of other stuff, like track nutrition.

“It just depends on how far some of the players want to go because if they’ve got aspirations to kick on, it will hopefully give them a little feel and flavour of that now.

“What we try to do is make it all about them.

“It’s a player-led environment that we’re here to support and try and make them the best version of them, so we just want the resources to be able to do the same.”

Clubs and players are more open to the benefits of sports science than ever before.

It’s important for Nelson to embrace that side of football as he steps up to National League South management.

But you still have to trust what the eye can see.

“The game has changed massively and if we don’t step along with it, then sometimes you can’t even recruit the right type of player, because they will ask questions,” said Nelson.

“Once we’ve got our feet under the table and we’re happy with where we are, it’s trying to lead in terms of technology and what we call off-the-field coaching.

“But the key to getting that right is not making it the be-all and end-all and being over-critical using those types of things because the game is still the game.

“It’s not to be used as a beating stick or anything like that, it’s just another pair of eyes and tools which gives us information.

“How you interpret that is really important and from a player perspective, we just want to keep that as simple as possible.

“But those who want to know a little bit more, we can do that, but really it’s just another piece of information that allows us to make more informed decisions.

“It’s not about saying, ‘But your tracker vest says you’ve only done 8k not 10k’ when we’ve won 4-0.

“We use it to try and aid development rather than say you haven’t done X, Y or Z.

“So you do have to be careful, it can go the wrong way and if it does, it can be detrimental to the progression of the team.”